Sharing your stories about questioning the orthodoxy

Tribe of Manasseh — North American Nephite Model

Introduction and Purpose

I have always loved apolo­get­ics. I enjoy dis­cussing doc­trine, scrip­tur­al ver­sus and evi­dence that sup­port or are seen as evi­dence against the Book of Mor­mon or LDS church. For that rea­son I have stud­ied the most com­mon com­plaints and evi­dence for and against the church.

In my teen years, when some teens would be doing reg­u­lar teen activ­i­ties and tak­ing dates to the Mesa tem­ple pageant, I would go to the Mesa tem­ple pageant — not to watch the pageant, but to have a “dis­cus­sion” with the evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians hand­ing out their tracks. From the time I was 17 until I left on my mis­sion, I believed I was prepar­ing myself to not only win con­verts but to defend the LDS church. I was very sur­prised when I received my mis­sion call to Syd­ney Aus­tralia to teach athe­ist and Bud­dhist Chi­nese immi­grants in Man­darin Chi­nese. While in Aus­tralia, I con­sid­ered myself lucky if a came across a Chi­nese immi­grant that was vague­ly famil­iar with the bib­li­cal Moses or Adam and Eve. Need­less to say, all the time I spent research­ing cri­tiques of the Book of Mor­mon and Bible was not uti­lized, but I still enjoyed my mis­sion and found it immense­ly chal­leng­ing and reward­ing.

After my mis­sion, I still stud­ied apolo­get­ics, but by 2004 my enthu­si­asm for LDS apolo­get­ics start­ed to wane. A lot of that was due to the type of evi­dence com­ing out in sup­port of the Mesoamer­i­can mod­el. Non-LDS archae­ol­o­gists and anthro­pol­o­gists could not sup­port the claims being made by their LDS col­leagues. I found this to be con­fus­ing, but many times with LDS apolo­get­ics when those Mesoamer­i­can cri­tiques could not be suit­ably answered, a wait and see atti­tude was tak­en. I think of that time peri­od as the dark ages of Book of Mor­mon geog­ra­phy and DNA apolo­get­ics. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my opin­ion is that LDS researchers suc­cess­ful­ly proved that the Book of Mor­mon did not take place in Mesoamer­i­ca.

Around 2011 I watched a four hour long video by Rod Mel­drum about the North Amer­i­can Book of Mor­mon Geog­ra­phy mod­el. I found the video extreme­ly excit­ing in that it all made sense why the gold­en plates were found in New York state and cer­tain scrip­tur­al ver­sus found in the Book of Mor­mon and Doc­trine and Covenants. This video reignit­ed my excite­ment about apolo­get­ics, and I began watch­ing oth­er videos by Wayne May about the Heart­land Book of Mor­mon geog­ra­phy mod­el.

At about this point, I start­ed going on blogs that were crit­i­cal of the LDS church and its claims. There was one blog in par­tic­u­lar that was run by a geneti­cist. I start­ed post­ing some of the Rod Mel­drum and Wayne May evi­dence in the com­ment sec­tion of his blog. At one point a dis­cus­sion about Mic­mac char­ac­ters ensued regard­ing their orig­i­na­tion. Were they a cre­ation of Father Chret­ian Le Cler­cq, or did he use already exist­ing Mic­mac char­ac­ters? I found a trans­lat­ed copy of Father Clercq’s book and start­ed read­ing to find the answer to this ques­tion. While read­ing his book, I read what appeared to be Christ’s vis­it to Amer­i­ca, the Gen­e­sis account, the flood, and sev­er­al Hebrew and Book of Mor­mon tra­di­tions and beliefs that appear to sup­port the Book of Mor­mon and Bible. This was about two years ago; from there I con­tin­ued to research more evi­dence writ­ten by ear­ly explor­ers and his­to­ri­ans and expand­ed my research by geneti­cist and anthro­pol­o­gist regard­ing DNA and arti­facts. Unlike the Mesoamer­i­can mod­el, all quotes and accounts in this doc­u­ment are from non-LDS archae­ol­o­gists, anthro­pol­o­gists, geneti­cists, and his­to­ri­ans. The research and accounts date from 2015 all the way back to the 16th cen­tu­ry.

20 Reasons why the Book of Mormon is a Historical Match in North America

In the 6 sec­tions of this essay, I pro­vide evi­dence that the North Amer­i­can geog­ra­phy mod­el answers all the nor­mal cri­tiques of the Book of Mormon“s his­toric­i­ty. The fol­low­ing 20 points out­line the evi­dence I have gath­ered:

The old­est known Hopewell Indi­an civ­i­liza­tion began around 500BC at Crys­tal Riv­er Flori­da, a time­line that match­es the Nephite arrival in North Amer­i­ca

The Hopewell dis­ap­pear­ance of 400AD-500AD match­es the Nephite geno­cide time­line from the Book of Mor­mon, the last epis­tle writ­ten in 421AD

The Hopewell Indi­ans had a south to north migra­tion that match­es the Nephite south to north migra­tion, as described in the Book of Mor­mon

The last Hopewell Indi­an sites are in close prox­im­i­ty to the Hill Cumorah, a geo­graph­i­cal match for Moroni’s farewell

Some North Amer­i­can Indi­an tribes had fair skins and appear Euro­pean to ear­ly set­tlers and mis­sion­ar­ies

Some North Amer­i­can Indi­an tribes believed that they sailed to Amer­i­can from anoth­er coun­try

The Ade­na Indi­ans close­ly match the Jared­ite civ­i­liza­tion in the Book of Mor­mon – such as the end of the Ade­na cul­ture around 200BC

Hopewell Indi­ans had a Cau­casian DNA mark­er called hap­logroup X that is also found in Israel and Europe, but not East Asia (page 2)

The Hopewell (and Adena/Jaredites) Indi­ans had an advanced met­al­lur­gy that includ­ed the use of cop­per and mete­oric iron tools, breast-plates, head-plates and jew­el­ry as described in the Book of Mor­mon, includ­ing: (page 3)

Why North American Indians and ‑only- North American Indians are Direct Descendants of Lehi

Hopewell Indi­ans match the time­frames and geog­ra­phy of the Book of Mor­mon

North Amer­i­can Indi­ans have a Cau­casian DNA mark­er

The Native Amer­i­cans believed they removed and killed off a Cau­casian race of Indi­an

North Amer­i­can Indi­ans have his­to­ries of sail­ing from anoth­er coun­try

Hopewell Indian

The old­est Hopewell site Crys­tal Riv­er Flori­da close prox­im­i­ty to the ocean is a like­ly match for Lehi’s land­ing in North Amer­i­ca.

The Hopewell dis­ap­pear­ance of 400AD-500AD match­es the Nephite geno­cide time­line from the Book of Mor­mon the last epis­tle writ­ten in 421AD.

While the cause of the cul­tur­al shift away from Hopewell prac­tices may be unclear, this change had occurred by around 400AD. (Thel­er and Boszhardt 2003:121).

16 rune­stones found in North Amer­i­ca are gen­er­al­ly believed to be fake. These rune­stones have what appears to be Hebrew, Phoeni­cian, and Greek-like char­ac­ters. These are the Bat Creek Stone, AVM Rune­stone, Bourne stone, Grave Creek Stone, Heav­en­er Rune­stone, Kens­ing­ton Rune­stone, Nar­ra­gansett Rune­stone, Okla­homa rune­stones, Poteau Rune­stone, Spir­it Pond rune­stones, Vérendrye Rune­stone, Shawnee Rune­stone, Ohio Key stone, Ohio Deca­logue stone, The Jon­son Brad­ner stone, and the Michi­gan Relics. The gen­er­al­ly accept­ed the­o­ry behind these rune­stones is that 19th and 20th cen­tu­ry farm­ers and cit­i­zens had an insa­tiable desire to make fake Indi­an paleo Hebrew, Greek and Phoeni­cian like arti­facts and had the abil­i­ty to do so. I find this prob­lem­at­ic.

Hopewell Indian Interaction Sphere

The old­est Hopewell civ­i­liza­tion start­ed near the Gulf Coast and moved north to the Great Lakes area to Include New York. See the map below:

Hill Cumorah

At the final bat­tles at the Hill Cumorah, near­ly a quar­ter of a mil­lion Nephites were slaugh­tered. An untold num­ber of Laman­ites were also killed. Indi­an leg­end sup­ports this great and ter­ri­ble bat­tle that caused the death of hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple.

Thayen­da­negea Mohawk/Iroquois Chief:

“From the ear­li­est knowl­edge the white men have pos­sessed of the coun­try of west­ern New York, the Paint­ed Post has been not­ed as a geo­graph­i­cal land­mark. When first tra­versed by the white men, a large oak­en post stood at the spot, which has retained the name to this day. It was paint­ed in the Indi­an man­ner, and was guard­ed as a mon­u­ment by the Indi­ana, who renewed it as often as it showed evi­dence of going to decay. Tra­di­tion says it was a mon­u­ment of great antiq­ui­ty, mark­ing the spot of a great and bloody bat­tle, accord­ing to some state­ments. Accord­ing to oth­ers, it was erect­ed to per­pet­u­ate the mem­o­ry of some great war-chief.” (My opin­ion is the great Chief is Mor­mon I can’t prove it though) (Paint­ed Post, New York is locat­ed about 70 miles away from Hill Cumorah) (Stone 1838 pg. 318)

In ref­er­ence to Buf­fa­lo, New York in close prox­im­i­ty to what is the nar­row neck of land and the Hill Cumorah:

“Tra­di­tion fix­es upon this spot as the scene of the final and most bloody con­flict between the Iro­quois and the ”Gah-kwas” or Eries, — a tra­di­tion which has been sup­posed to derive some sanc­tion from the num­ber of frag­ments of decayed human bones which are scat­tered over the area.” (Squier 1849)

Caucasian North American Indians

Since tra­di­tion­al Jews are known to be Cau­casian or of lighter skin col­or. It’s not hard to fath­om that the Tribe of Man­asseh, the tribe Lehi descend­ed from, also would have Cau­casian or lighter skin col­or. Hap­logroup X found in North Amer­i­can Indi­ans is con­sid­ered to be a Cau­casian DNA mark­er. Oth­er North, Cen­tral, and South Amer­i­can Indi­ans show the hap­logroups A, B, C, and D, which came from migrat­ing Asian eth­nic tribes of that peri­od, with which Laman’s seed would have like­ly inter­mar­ried.

The Nephites became Laman­ites and Laman­ites became Nephites sug­gest­ing dif­fer­ent shades in skin col­or as the Book of Mor­mon states.

“A recent sur­vey of Euro­pean mtD­NA has demon­strat­ed the pres­ence of the same “oth­er” hap­lo­type motif in mod­ern Euro­pean pop­u­la­tions, in which it is called “Hap­logroup X.”” (MtD­NA hap­logroup X: An Ancient Link between Europe/Western Asia and North Amer­i­ca?)

“To date, hap­logroup X has not been unam­bigu­ous­ly iden­ti­fied in Asia, rais­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some Native Amer­i­can founders were of Cau­casian ances­try.” (MtD­NA hap­logroup X: An Ancient Link between Europe/Western Asia and North Amer­i­ca?)

Near­ly one-third of Native Amer­i­can genes come from west Eurasian peo­ples with ties to the Mid­dle East and Europe.

On the basis of genet­ic analy­sis of some serum and red-cell pro­tein poly­mor­phisms, Sza­th­mary and Reed (1972) and Sza­th­mary et al. (1974) were able to reveal the pres­ence of “Cau­casian” alle­les in the south­east­ern Ojib­wa and to give an esti­mate of Cau­casian admix­ture of ~30%; how­ev­er, more recent data on oth­er auto­so­mal locus poly­mor­phisms indi­cate that the genet­ic admix­ture may be as great as 50%.

(mtD­NA and Y Chro­mo­some-Spe­cif­ic Poly­mor­phisms in Mod­ern Ojib­wa: Impli­ca­tions about the Ori­gin of Their Gene Pool)

William Penn wrote the fol­low­ing to a friend in Eng­land. “I found them [the Indi­ans of the east­ern shore of North Amer­i­ca] with like coun­te­nances with the Hebrew race; and their chil­dren of so live­ly a resem­blance to them that a man would think him­self in Duke’s place, or Bar­ry Street, in Lon­don, when he sees them.” (Mur­ray 1908)

“The Chero­kee are of a lighter col­or than the greater num­ber of the North Amer­i­can Indi­ans that are known to me.” (Bar­ton 1798 pg. XIV)

“They (Algo­nquin Indi­ans) have the same com­plex­ion as the French.” (Jou­ven­cy 1710)

About Gaspesian/Micmac Indians

“Although chil­dren are born among them with hair of dif­fer­ent colours, as in Europe.” (Cler­cq 1680 pg. 237)

“The hue or col­or of their bod­ies is gen­er­al­ly not as white as ours though some quite fair skinned ones are to be found and most are born white.” (In Mohawk Coun­try: Ear­ly Nar­ra­tives about a Native Peo­ple, by Dean R. Snow, Charles T. Gehring, William A. Star­na)

The Amlicites were Nephites who want­ed to be ruled by a king instead of appoint­ed judges. These Nephites rebelled and in their rebel­lion joined the Laman­ites. There was one prob­lem though. I believe that their skin col­or was of a lighter Cau­casian skin col­or. The seed of Laman on their arrival in the new world most like­ly inter­mar­ried with the indige­nous Asian eth­nic tribes of their day. So the Amlicites would have most like­ly looked like Nephites instead of Laman­ites. So in order for the Amlicites to dis­tin­guish them­selves from the Nephites they marked their fore­heads with red paint. The Chero­kee Indi­ans are excel­lent can­di­dates to be the Amlicites. From his­tor­i­cal accounts to the cur­rent day many Chero­kee who claim to be full blood­ed Chero­kee have Euro­pean fea­tures and skin col­or. Its looks as though red paint con­tin­ued to be a part of Laman­ite cul­ture.

Alma 3:4 – And the Amlicites were dis­tin­guished from the Nephites, for they had marked them­selves with red in their fore­heads after the man­ner of the Laman­ites.

The hap­logroup X Cau­casian DNA mark­er might be demon­strat­ed in sev­er­al George Cait­lyn Native Amer­i­can por­traits. This is assum­ing that the Native Amer­i­can chiefs and indi­vid­u­als have no Euro­pean admix­ture of the 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry, since the por­traits were paint­ed in the 19th cen­tu­ry.

“The Chero­kee are of a lighter col­or than the greater num­ber of the North Amer­i­can Indi­ans that are known to me.” (Bar­ton 1798 pg. XIV)

Wolf Pawnee Tribe, his name trans­lates to Brave Chief

Chero­kee Indi­an, Cól-lee, Band Chief

“They (Algo­nquin Indi­ans) have the same com­plex­ion as the French.” (JOSEPH, JOUVENCY 1710)

“(Mic­mac Indi­an chil­dren) are born among them with hair of dif­fer­ent colours, as in Europe.” (Cler­cq 1680, pg. 237)

Sauk Fox Tribe, Pam‑a ho

Lay-láw-she-kaw, Goes up the Riv­er, an Aged Chief

Mis­souria Tribe, Haw-che-ke-sug-ga

Shawnee, Lay-loo-ah-pee-ai-shee-kaw

Nako­ta Sioux, Tah-zee-keh-da-cha

Chief Bread of the Onei­da Tribe

It’s inter­est­ing that many of the por­traits with Euro­pean fea­tures also wear a tur­ban like head dress.

A White Race and its Extermination

Con­cern­ing Hat­tera Indi­ans of North Car­oli­na:

“These Hat­tera tell us, that sev­er­al of their Ances­tors were white Peo­ple, and could talk in a Book, as we do; the Truth of which is con­firmed by gray eyes being found fre­quent­ly amongst these Indi­ans, and no oth­ers.” (John Law­son 1709 pg. 62)

The Nephites who I believe had Cau­casian DNA were killed off by the Laman­ites. The North Amer­i­can Indi­ans have a leg­end of a for­eign white race being com­plete­ly killed or removed from cer­tain areas.

Cap­tain Brant Thayen­da­negea was a well-known Iro­quois and Mohawk leader and Chief who sided with the British dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary war. He was born of Iro­quois par­ents who con­vert­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty. They gave him a Chris­t­ian name Joseph Brant. The quote is from his biog­ra­phy:

“I was curi­ous to learn in the course of my con­ver­sa­tions with Cap­tain Brant (Thayen­da­negea Mohawk/Iroquois Chief), what infor­ma­tion he could give me respect­ing the tumuli (mounds) which are found on and near the mar­gin of the rivers and lakes, from the St. Lawrence to the Mis­sis­sip­pi. He stat­ed, in reply, that the sub­ject had long been agi­tat­ed, but yet remained in some obscu­ri­ty. A tra­di­tion, he said, pre­vailed among the dif­fer­ent nations of Indi­ans through-out that whole exten­sive range of coun­try, and had been hand­ed down time immemo­r­i­al, that in an age long gone by, there came white men from a for­eign coun­try, and by con­sent of the Indi­ans estab­lished trad­ing-hous­es and set­tle­ments where these tumuli (mounds) are found. A friend­ly inter­course was con­tin­ued for sev­er­al years; many of the white men brought their wives, and had chil­dren born to them; and addi­tions to their num­bers were made year­ly from their own coun­try. These cir­cum­stances at length gave rise to jeal­ousies among the Indi­ans, and fears began to be enter­tained in regard to the increas­ing num­bers, wealth, and ulte­ri­or views of the new com­ers; appre­hend­ing that becom­ing strong, they might one day seize upon the coun­try as their own. A secret coun­cil, com­posed of the chiefs of all the dif­fer­ent nations from the St. Lawrence to the Mis­sis­sip­pi, was there­fore con­voked; the result of which, after long delib­er­a­tion, was a res­o­lu­tion that on a cer­tain night des­ig­nat­ed for that pur­pose, all their white neigh­bors, men, women and chil­dren, should be exter­mi­nat­ed.“ (Stone 1838 pg. 484)

“Here the Indi­ans tell us there was a war in ear­ly times, against an Indi­an town, traces of which are yet vis­i­ble, corn pits, etc. This was inhab­it­ed by a dis­tinct nation, nei­ther Iro­quois nor Delawares, who spoke a pecu­liar lan­guage, and were called Tehoti­tachse, against them the Five Nations warred and rout­ed them out; the Cayu­gas for a time held a num­ber cap­tive, but the nation and the lan­guage are now exter­mi­nat­ed and extinct.” (Mur­ray 1908 pg. 46)

Natchez Indi­ans of Mis­sis­sip­pi, in ref­er­ence to an ancient race of Indi­an who pre­ced­ed them and even­tu­al­ly were defeat­ed:

“I did not fail to ask him who these war­riors of fire were. “They were,” said he, “beard­ed men, white but swarthy… They had come on float­ing vil­lages from the side where the sun ris­es. They con­quered the ancients of the coun­try, of whom they killed as many as there are spears of grass in the Prairies, and in the begin­ning they were good friends of our broth­ers, but ulti­mate­ly they made them sub­mit as well as the ancients of the coun­try, as our Suns (lead­ers) had fore­seen and had fore­told to them.”” (Swan­ton 1909 pg. 184)

“There is a dim but per­sis­tent tra­di­tion of a strange white race pre­ced­ing the Chero­kee, some of the sto­ries even going so far as to locate their for­mer set­tle­ments and to iden­ti­fy them as the authors of the ancient works found in the coun­try. The ear­li­est ref­er­ence appears to be that of Bar­ton in 1797, on the state­ment of a gen­tle­man whom he quotes as a valu­able author­i­ty upon the south­ern tribes. “The Chero­kee tell us, that when they first arrived in the coun­try which they inhab­it, they found it pos­sessed by cer­tain ‘moon-eyed peo­ple,’ who could not see in the day-time. These wretch­es they expelled.” He seems to con­sid­er them an albi­no race.* Hay­wood, twen­ty-six years lat­er, says that the invad­ing Chero­kee found “white peo­ple” near the head of the Lit­tle Ten­nessee, with forts extend­ing thence down the Ten­nessee as far as Chicka­mau­ga creek. He gives the loca­tion of three of these forts. The Chero­kee made war against them and drove them to the mouth of Big Chicka­mau­ga creek, where they entered into a treaty and agreed to remove if per­mit­ted to depart in peace. Per­mis­sion being grant­ed, they aban­doned the coun­try. Else­where he speaks of this extir­pat­ed white race as hav­ing extend­ed into Ken­tucky and prob­a­bly also into west­ern Ten­nessee, accord­ing to the con­cur­rent tra­di­tions of dif­fer­ent tribes.” (Mooney 1902 pg. 22)

“Did not these skele­tons belong to per­sons of the same race with those white peo­ple, who were extir­pat­ed in part, and in part dri­ven from Ken­tucky, and prob­a­bly also from West Ten­nessee, as Indi­an tra­di­tion reports?” (Hay­wood 1823 pg. 166)

“An old Indi­an, in con­ver­sa­tion with Colonel James F. Moore, of Ken­tucky, informed him that the west­ern coun­try, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Ken­tucky, had once been inhab­it­ed by white peo­ple, but that they were exter­mi­nat­ed by the Indi­ans. That the last bat­tle was fought at the falls of Ohio, and that the Indi­ans suc­ceed­ed in dri­ving the Abo­rig­ines into a small island below the rapids, where the whole of them were cut to pieces.” (M.H. Frost 1819; On the abo­rig­ines of the West­ern Coun­tries)

“Mr. Thomas Bod­ley was informed by Indi­ans of dif­fer­ent tribes north­west of the Ohio, that they had under­stood from their old men, and that it had been a tra­di­tion among their sev­er­al nations, that Ken­tucky had been set­tled by whites, and that they had been exter­mi­nat­ed by war. They were of opin­ion that the old for­ti­fi­ca­tions, now to be seen in Ken­tucky and Ohio, were the pro­duc­tions of those white inhab­i­tants. Wap­pock­anit­ta, a Shawnee chief, near a hun­dred and twen­ty years old, liv­ing on the Auglaze Riv­er, con­firmed the above tra­di­tion.” (M.H. Frost 1819; On the abo­rig­ines of the West­ern Coun­tries)

Sailed Here from another Country

In the Book of Mor­mon it states that Lehi and his fam­i­ly sailed from the Mid­dle East to anoth­er coun­try. Some North Amer­i­can Indi­an tribes have a belief that they arrived to the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent through sail­ing from anoth­er coun­try.

Gaspesian/Micmac belief of how they arrived on the North American continent

The Gaspesian/Micmac have two the­o­ries of how they arrived. The first is by sail­ing from anoth­er coun­try, and the oth­er belief fits the Gen­e­sis account and flood.

“Oth­ers hold that this new world has been peo­pled by cer­tain indi­vid­u­als who, hav­ing embarked upon the sea for the pur­pose of estab­lish­ing a colony in for­eign parts, were sur­prised by storm and tem­pest, which threw them upon the coasts of North Amer­i­ca. Here they were unfor­tu­nate­ly ship­wrecked, and, with their ships, they lost every­thing which they must have had with them of prop­er­ty, and of the things which they val­ued most in the world. Affairs were such that this ship­wreck hav­ing left them whol­ly with­out hope of ever return­ing into their own coun­try.” (Cler­cq 1680, pg. 85)

Iroquois legend of a foreign people who sailed to the continent then were destroyed

Cusick’s book I believe is about the Nephite and Laman­ite Inter­ac­tions and fight­ing except from the Laman­ite per­spec­tive told in Iro­quois Leg­end.

“After a long time a num­ber of for­eign peo­ple sailed from a port unknown; but unfor­tu­nate­ly before reached their des­ti­na­tion the winds drove them con­trary ; at length their ship wrecked some­where on the south­ern part of the Great Island, and many of the crews per­ished ; a few active per­sons were saved ….They imme­di­ate­ly select­ed a place for res­i­dence and built a small for­ti­fi­ca­tion in order to pro­vide against the attacks of furi­ous beasts….After many years the for­eign peo­ple became numer­ous, and extend­ed their set­tle­ments ; but after­wards they were destroyed” (Cusick 1838, pg. 16)

Natchez Indians of Mississippi concerning a race of Indian that preceded them

“They had come on float­ing vil­lages from the side where the sun ris­es.” (Swan­ton 1909, pg. 184)

“There is a rock, called the Dighton rock, on Taunton Riv­er, near Dighton, in Mass­a­chu­setts. It is a large rock in the mar­gin of the sea, and upon it are inscrip­tions in strange char­ac­ters, part­ly alpha­bet­i­cal and part­ly hiero­glyph­ic… In anoth­er scene, there is a ves­sel, with its masts, flags, and long rud­der, as in the ori­en­tal ves­sels at this day…The sub­ject gen­er­al­ly seems intend­ed to com­mem­o­rate the arrival of a peo­ple there from the ocean and the east, and who, hav­ing had inter­course with that natives) (Hay­wood 1823, pg. 329)

The Jaredites

The Ade­na (Jared­ite) cul­ture end­ing at 200BC is a Book of Mor­mon match.

Bones dis­cov­ered in Hopewell and Ade­na Indi­an sites were of larg­er than nor­mal size. Some of the skele­tons were esti­mat­ed to be 7 feet in height. The Broth­er of Jared was con­sid­ered a mighty man large in stature.

The Ade­na civ­i­liza­tion also had breast­plates and cloth as described in the Book of Mor­mon.

Adena Culture

The Ade­na cul­ture is the civ­i­liza­tion that is most like­ly can­di­date to be the Jared­ites as explained in the Book of Mor­mon. The end of the Ade­na cul­ture is a match for the Book of Mor­mon of 200BC. The Jared­ites are stat­ed have breast­plates it’s shown that the Ade­na had a form of met­al­lur­gy. The Jared­ite writ­ten lan­guage was most like­ly cuneiform. Cuneiform is known to be writ­ten on met­al and clay tablets. The Ade­na are known to have stone tablets with styl­ized geo­met­ric designs on their tablets. Cor­re­la­tions between Ade­na and Hopewell in some ways also help sup­port the Ade­na as the Jared­ite peo­ple.

It’s believed that the Ade­na civ­i­liza­tion began around 1000 BC. The Jared­ites would have arrived on the Amer­i­can con­ti­nent around 2000 BC to the time of the Tow­er of Babel. Some the­olo­gians have sug­gest­ed the tow­er babel could be the Mesopotamia Zig­gu­rat of Baby­lon or the city of Ur.

The Mesopotami­an cul­ture was dis­tinct in sev­er­al ways. In one par­tic­u­lar man­ner is the shape Mesopotami­an built boats, it is dis­tinct from the major­i­ty of oth­er cul­tures. The Mesopotami­ans built boats that were round called cor­a­cles. The Book of Mor­mon states that the Broth­er of Jared built boats that are tight like unto a dish. The cir­cu­lar design of the Broth­er of Jared’s boats in today’s stan­dards is an odd and pecu­liar design. But dur­ing his time in what could be Mesopotamia the cir­cu­lar design of the boat would fit right in. Iraq peo­ple in what is ancient Mesopotamia con­tin­ued to make round cor­a­cles up until the 1990s when the cor­a­cles were replaced with mod­ern boats.

Neo Baby­lon­ian Zig­gu­rat

Because the Ade­na cul­ture began around 1000BC and the tow­er of Babel dat­ed to 2000BC. I’m going to assume the orig­i­nal set­tle­ments of the Broth­er of Jared have not been found. Accord­ing to scrip­ture the broth­er of Jared land­ed the eight cir­cu­lar boats in what would now be Lake Ontario. The boats as described in the scrip­tures were light upon the water. In this way the boats must have been blown up the St Lawrence Sea­way to Lake Ontario.

The end of the Ade­na cul­ture is believed to have hap­pened around 200BC. It’s assumed that the Ade­na even­tu­al­ly became part of the Hopewell peo­ple the Ade­na super­im­pos­ing the Hopewell cul­ture as their own. There are aspects of this that line up with the Book of Mor­mon.

From the time of Babel the Broth­er of Jared’s pos­ter­i­ty con­tin­ues until Cori­antumr leads his peo­ple in war to the point that he is the only per­son alive from the Jared­ites. After the slaugh­ter of all his peo­ple Cori­antumr lives with the Mulekites for the space of nine moons. As explained in the Book of Omni the peri­od of Cori­antumr liv­ing with the Mulekites and the destruc­tion of the Jared­ites is between 323BC-130BC. This time peri­od falls in line with the Ade­na cul­ture end or being absorbed into the Hopewell cul­ture. We know that the Mulekites who Cori­antumr stayed with became Nephites. It states that the Mulekites learned the Nephite lan­guage and that Mosi­ah became their king. Since archae­ol­o­gist are not show­ing a third civ­i­liza­tion along with the Ade­na and Hopewell. I’m going to spec­u­late that the Mulekites are being mis­tak­en as Hopewell pos­si­bly Ade­na.

There are archae­o­log­i­cal aspects and his­tor­i­cal records giv­en in the Book of Mor­mon that do line up cer­tain­ly not per­fect­ly but in pieces. Archae­o­log­i­cal records show that the Ade­na peo­ple and the Hopewell com­bined togeth­er at 200BC. Since archae­ol­o­gists have not sug­gest­ed that the Ade­na peo­ple dis­ap­peared it obvi­ous­ly an aspect that does not fit the his­tor­i­cal record of the Book of Mor­mon. But I don’t think it’s com­plete­ly out­landish to sug­gest that the Mulekites and Nephites took over Ade­na sites as their own after the geno­cide of the Jared­ites. But some sites stayed dis­tinct­ly Ade­na and do not show the Hopewell admix­ture after 200BC sug­gest­ing in my unpro­fes­sion­al opin­ion those sites were aban­doned by the Ade­na because they were all killed by war with their own peo­ple. Anthro­pol­o­gist can spec­u­late as to why but only a study of the Book of Mor­mon in my unpro­fes­sion­al will reveal mys­ter­ies of the Ade­na and Hopewell cul­tures.

Below is a map of Ade­na and Hopewell sites. One can see the admix­ture of Ade­na with Hopewell around 200BC and Ade­na sites that were aban­doned. Fort Ancient sites date to 1000AD are believed to have descend­ed from the Hopewell (Laman­ites). One can be very well look­ing at cities men­tioned in the Book of Mor­mon.

A con­tro­ver­sial aspect of the argu­ment is that I believe that the Ade­na cul­ture are the pos­ter­i­ty of the giants list­ed in the Bible. The bible states that a race of giants lived in cer­tain areas of the Old World. Goliath based on Jose­phus, and the 4th cen­tu­ry Sep­tu­agint man­u­scripts was 6 feet 9 inch­es tall. The Book of Mor­mon sup­ports the idea that the Jared­ites were of large size. The Book of Mor­mon states the Broth­er of Jared was con­sid­ered a large and mighty man (Ether 1:34). Also when the Nephites found Jared­ite breast plates they con­sid­ered them of large size (Mosi­ah 8:10). There is archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence of 20th cen­tu­ry researchers and ear­ly set­tlers find­ing skele­tons that were of large size some being sev­en feet tall.

“The work­men who were engaged in dig­ging ditch­es for under­drain­ing had a few days before come upon large quan­ti­ties of pot­tery and skele­tons of large size, but had care­less­ly bro­ken them instead of pre­serv­ing them. “ (Peet 1892 pg. 163)

“These will prove demon­stra­tive­ly, that the ancient inhab­i­tants of this coun­try, either the prim­i­tive or sec­ondary set­tlers, were of gigan­tic stature, com­pared with the present races of Indi­ans.” (Hay­wood)

“He took a jaw bone and applied it to his own face, and when his chin touched the con­cave of the chin bone, the hin­der ends of the jaw bone did not touch the skin of his face on either side.” (Hay­wood)

“The remains of bur­ial 40 is one of the largest known to Ade­na; the skull-foot field mea­sure­ment is 84 inch­es (7 feet).” (The Dover Mound, William S Webb and Charles Snow, 1959)

“This indi­vid­ual was of large pro­por­tions. When mea­sured in the tomb his length was approx­i­mate­ly 7.04 feet. All the long bones were heavy and pos­sessed marked emi­nences for the attach­ment of mus­cles.” (Mounds for the Dead, by Don Dra­goo, 1963).

“Two out­stand­ing traits have been not­ed repeat­ed­ly for this group. One is the pro­trud­ing and mas­sive chin often with promi­nent bilat­er­al pro­tru­sions. The sec­ond trait is the large size of many of the males and some of the females. A male of six feet was com­mon and some indi­vid­u­als approach­ing sev­en feet in height have been found, for exam­ple, Bur­ial 40 in the Dover Mound and Bur­ial 54 in the Cre­sap Mound. Some of the females in the Dover Mound also were more than six feet in height. Not only were these Ade­na peo­ple tall but also the mas­sive­ness of the bones indi­cates pow­er­ful­ly built indi­vid­u­als. The head was gen­er­al­ly big with a large cra­nial capac­i­ty.” (Mounds for the Dead, by Don Dra­goo, 1963).

Nephi and the Broth­er of Jared who’s pos­ter­i­ty would be the Nephites and Jared­ites are both depict­ed as large men (1 Nephi 4:31, Ether 1:34). Mor­mon also con­sid­ered to be large in stature. (Mor­mon 2:1)

David Cusick book enti­tled Ancient His­to­ry of The Six Nations is about the leg­ends of the Iro­quois. I believe their leg­ends has a hodge­podge of the Jared­ites and Nephite his­to­ries mixed togeth­er. The tra­di­tion­al lands of the Iro­quois includes New York and they have leg­ends of exter­mi­nat­ing a white race of Indi­an. The six nations are com­posed of the Mohawk, Onei­da, Cayu­ga, Seneca, Ononda­ga, and Tus­caro­ra nations. Some of these tribes might have been Nephites. But in these leg­ends are signs that their ances­tors knew of the Jared­ites.

In the His­to­ry of the Six Nations one of their leg­end a pow­er­ful tribe of “ston­ish giants” enter the coun­try. The Iro­quois bat­tle the giants but the giants are too pow­er­ful. The Iro­quois God sees the dis­tress of his peo­ple and devices a plan to get rid of these giants. A band of giants are tricked into to enter­ing a ravine and a mass of rocks fall onto the giants killing all but one. This one sur­vivor tell the oth­er giants and the giants seek asy­lum in the North Coun­try. There are bits and pieces to this leg­end that match the his­tor­i­cal record of the Book of Mor­mon. One is that these giants have forts of pro­tec­tion. The giants had stony exte­ri­or which I would attribute breast plates and head plates that the Jared­ites had. The giants had clubs which I’m going to inter­pret as swords. I believe the use of swords got lost with time. Anoth­er impor­tant aspect is that the Iro­quois in this Leg­end nev­er kill off these ston­ish giants but the rea­son why the leave Iro­quois coun­try is due to their God. Their God kills off a band of giants there is one lone sur­vivor who tells the rest of the giants what hap­pened. The rest of the giants depart the Iro­quois coun­try via Nia­gara Falls or the nar­row pas­sage and seek asy­lum into the Land Des­o­la­tion. The Land Des­o­la­tion as described in the Book of Mor­mon is where all the Jared­ites or giants are even­tu­al­ly killed leav­ing noth­ing but bones and their forts of pro­tec­tion. The geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions where this leg­end takes place is per­fect in this way. The land Des­o­la­tion being entered by the nar­row pas­sage. The place that these giants seek asy­lum is also the place the Jared­ite peo­ple are extin­guished by war against each oth­er, and in the end there is one lone sur­vivor, Cori­antumr.

The depic­tions of the ston­ish giants is pic­tured below from Cusick’s book:

In the next sec­tion, I present the con­vinc­ing DNA con­nec­tion between the Hopewell Indi­ans and the Mid­dle East.

Series Nav­i­ga­tion: North Amer­i­can Book of Mor­mon Geog­ra­phy — David McK­ane

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Hel­lo, My name is Angela. I am glad that some­one has put this site up. I am a con­vert to the church. The first time that the spir­it tes­ti­fied to me was when I was told the Book of Mor­mon was a his­to­ry of the Native Amer­i­cans here on this con­ti­nent and that Jesus Christ came to vis­it them. The moment I heard this I knew I was hear­ing truth and I knew the things that I felt were not coin­ci­dence and that The Sav­ior had not for­got­ten us and I knew he loved us and I knew what I had felt since I was a child was true. I am pale skinned and school­mates grow­ing up teased me when I said I was Indi­an, I learned more of my fam­i­ly tree and found that I was Native from many lines, Chero­kee, Shawnee, and Fox, and Wyan­dotte and more. I… Read more »

This will be my last post on this site and I’m sure that will please the LDS crowd. As soon as I fin­ish I will unsub­scribe. My inter­est in the LDS began in the late 1960s when a cou­ple mis­sion­ar­ies came to my house to spread the word. After two vis­its, I polite­ly told them that I did­n’t wish to con­tin­ue because the pre­sen­ta­tion did­n’t grab me. I remem­ber read­ing the so-called “promise of Moroni” (as mis­sion­ar­ies are apt to mark it up in Book of Mor­mon free copies), and thought it to be a rather vague and weak state­ment, not an espe­cial­ly good verse for recruit­ing new believ­ers. So a few days passed and I received a call from the LDS church office, as they want­ed to set up a bap­tism date for me. A lit­tle out­raged (because I gave no indi­ca­tion of want­i­ng to join), I hung up… Read more »

to David McK­ane The buf­fa­lo dodge is an attempt to change the sub­ject. Obvi­ous­ly buf­fa­lo were killed and there’s plen­ty of proof of it, not just because of skele­tal remains but because we have reports from many sources; Indi­ans, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, bystanders, news­pa­pers, landown­ers, etc. etc. The 600 mil­lion fig­ure might be hyped a bit, how­ev­er. Every major civ­i­liza­tion has left a great deal of phys­i­cal evi­dence to sift through. Only an imag­i­nary civ­i­liza­tion can get by with­out leav­ing traces of any major struc­tures, edi­fices, etc. In my col­lec­tion of books on mound builders in Illi­nois, (pub­lished by Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Press) the most impres­sive struc­tures I’ve seen are cat­tle stock­ades and some mean­der­ing trench­es. The U.S. was nev­er home to amaz­ing struc­tures like those found in ancient Turkey, Iran, Greece, Rome or Egypt. Are you sug­gest­ing they’re here, but we just haven’t dug it up yet?

I meant 60 mil­lion not 600. Ferd I think you are los­ing focus of what is impor­tant here. The advanced cul­ture of the Hopewell as described by anthro­pol­o­gist and arche­ol­o­gist match up with what is described in the Book of Mor­mon. It’s not a com­par­i­son of oth­er world civ­i­liza­tions or which civ­i­liza­tions are more advanced. The Hopewell breast­plates, struc­tures, cloth, high­ways, head plates, agri­cul­ture, time­line, jew­el­ry, weapons and trade match up with the Book of Mor­mon. The Book of Mor­mon states that the Nephites used mounds of earth. Well guess what so did the mound builders (Hopewell). Mounds of earth may not be impres­sive to you but it’s a per­fect match for the Nephites to include all their arti­facts. If you have a prob­lem with the term advanced take that up with the anthro­pol­o­gist I think they would dis­agree with you. As far as the sources that I used they… Read more »

Bor­row­ing mod­ern research of oth­ers, then try­ing to make it look like an “ancient” book record­ed these things long ago is a tech­nique used by cer­tain nov­el­ists like Philip K. Dick. “Cryp­toscat­ol­ogy” is a style of writ­ing not too unlike his­tor­i­cal fic­tion that bases the sto­ry on known facts and urban leg­ends and injects a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that’s half way plau­si­ble. I see the BoM in a sim­i­lar light. For instance, every­one in J. Smith’s time knew some­thing about the pres­ence of ancient Indi­ans in the area, but their basic igno­rance of specifics fueled wild spec­u­la­tion, includ­ing the idea that the Amer­i­can Indi­ans were of the lost tribe of Israel. And pri­or to Smith’s inter­est in such things, there were a num­ber of pop­u­lar books in cir­cu­la­tion pro­mot­ing the idea that ancient Israelites once flour­ished in North Amer­i­ca. The basic dif­fer­ence between these pre BoM writ­ings and the BoM is… Read more »

If Joseph Smith pla­gia­rized from the arche­o­log­i­cal and native Amer­i­can tra­di­tions he got a lot of things right includ­ing things he could not have known about. The Hopewell tra­di­tion which the major­i­ty of North Amer­i­can the­o­rist believe are the Nephites and Ade­na being the Jared­ites. The Hopewell time­line match­es the Book of Mor­mon. The Ade­na end is close to but the BOM does not give a very spe­cif­ic peri­od for end of the Jared­ites. The Hopewell had advanced tech­nol­o­gy such as the mak­ing of breast­plates and met­al work­ing. Mod­ern anthro­pol­o­gist have tried to make breast­plates in the same man­ner they believe the Hopewell did. And even with mod­ern press­es have not repli­cat­ed them. The made their own cloth cloth­ing. Had an advanced trade sys­tem with high­ways that stretched for thou­sands miles. Obsid­i­an found at Hopewell sites are chem­i­cal­ly traced back to sites in the Rocky Moun­tains. Jaguar teeth found in… Read more »

I don’t think Smith got a sin­gle thing right and the claims the Book of Mor­mon makes are not espe­cial­ly unique for its time. The Book of Mor­mon does­n’t account for more than two groups that migrat­ed to the U.S., but we know, for exam­ple, that ancient Chi­nese set­tle­ments have been found in New Mex­i­co and Ari­zona approx. 3,300 years ago. In addi­tion, 1,000 year-old Viking relics have been dis­cov­ered in Flori­da. These find­ings have been well-doc­u­ment­ed, but Book of Mor­mon claims leave us stymied because it leaves a great deal to the imag­i­na­tion. Take Cumorah Hill for exam­ple. The BoM men­tions a great bat­tle there that result­ed in many thou­sands killed. There is no trace of any such strug­gle in the region. The BoM alludes to great ancient civ­i­liza­tions in north Amer­i­ca, but why is there no trace of them? I describe a “great” civ­i­liza­tion as one like Greece, Rome, Turkey… Read more »

Ferd I for­got to add this you stat­ed that there was no evi­dence for the bat­tles in the Book of Mor­mon. I would dis­agree. Mass Bur­ial Pits and Bat­tle­grounds Two thirds of the Book of Mor­mon is about wars between the Laman­ites and Nephites. Large bone pits and piles were found in the state of New York and oth­er states. These large bone pits are sup­port­ive evi­dence of the bat­tles that took place between Nephites and Laman­ites. In the last bat­tles Mor­mon states that bod­ies of the Nephites were heaped into piles (Mor­mon 2:15). New York State: “It was called the “Bone Fort,” from the cir­cum­stance that the ear­ly set­tlers found with­in it a mound, six feet in height by thir­ty at the base, which was entire­ly made up of human bones slight­ly cov­ered with earth… The pop­u­lar opin­ion con­cern­ing this accu­mu­la­tion is, that it con­tained the bones of the… Read more »

Your idea of what con­sti­tutes a “mass bur­ial pit” must be very dif­fer­ent from mine. Also, if a quar­ter of a mil­lion “Nephites” were killed at Cumorah Hill, and “untold num­ber” of “Laman­ites” were killed there also, it’s only log­i­cal to con­clude that we should be able to find a great many skele­tal remains, but it’s not there. Sure, the mound builders buried their peo­ple there, but we have not come across any­thing approach­ing the mag­ni­tude sug­gest­ed by the BoM account. Now, it’s fine to quote native leg­ends, but don’t assume they’re all true or that they all got their oral his­to­ry right. Do you know any Native Amer­i­can cre­ation sto­ries? If not, read a few of them and tell me if you can believe in every­thing you read. All the sources you refer to here are cir­ca 1840’s, before arche­ol­o­gy was an estab­lished sci­ence. When we use terms like… Read more »

First of all these were not pio­neers but farm­ers. Squier him­self did work for the Smith­son­ian. Also I was going by what was stat­ed in the Book of Mor­mon Mor­mon 2:15 states that the bod­ies were heaped up as dung. I see that as piles of bod­ies. Squier found one pile was that was six feet deep and base 30 feet oth­ers found bones every­where on there farm lands that works for me I’m sor­ry it does not work for you.

Sec­ond there was once 60 mil­lion buf­fa­lo that were wiped because the gov­ern­ment want­ed to destroy the major food source for Native Amer­i­cans. Under your think­ing this nev­er hap­pened because there are not 60 mil­lion buf­fa­lo bones out in the prairies and the records of this hap­pen­ing are real­ly old.

Thank you for shar­ing this tid­bit of infor­ma­tion. It explains what farm­ers must have done when they found the piles of human bones and bone pits found on their farm­lands. They used it as fer­til­iz­er.

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July 17, 2016 8:37 pm

Yonah unega

Dear Ferd Have you ever at seen the extent of the Cahokia Mounds they esti­mate over a mil­lion peo­ple lived in the sur­round­ing envi­rons I’ve been to the Etowah Mounds in Geor­gia near Atlanta and on top of the biggest Mound you can see the city of Atlanta which is miles away that com­plex is one of the small ones farm­ers and whites have con­sis­tent­ly and per­sis­tent­ly destroyed and erased evi­dence of the great civ­i­liza­tions that exist­ed in Amer­i­ca pre Colum­bus and we’re just now start­ing to real­ize that they were much more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced than we gave them cred­it for you sound like some­one that espous­es man­i­fest des­tiny. Man­i­fest Des­tiny is what destroyed the evi­dence of great native civ­i­liza­tions in North Amer­i­ca. I am a proud Chero­kee and we have a great oral tra­di­tion that goes back many hun­dreds of years I’ve walked Fort Moun­tain Geor­gia where there are… Read more »

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February 10, 2018 4:53 am

tapirrider

” It explains what farm­ers must have done when they found the piles of human bones and bone pits found on their farm­lands. They used it as fer­til­iz­er.”

No David, what it demon­strates is that the dis­ap­pear­ance of the bison bones is well doc­u­ment­ed and account­ed for. The dis­ap­pear­ance of those bones can­not be used in an argu­ment to claim that Book of Mor­mon bat­tle vic­tims’ bones like­wise dis­ap­peared. There was no indus­try or machin­ery used to grind “piles of human bones” into fer­til­iz­er. The quan­ti­ty of human bones found on farm­lands is in no way com­pa­ra­ble to the bison bones. And the quan­ti­ty of human remains and the evi­dence on those bones of injuries caus­ing death do not sup­port the Book of Mor­mon’s claims of mil­lions being killed in bat­tle.

Well tapir I guess we will have to dis­agree with how the evi­dence presents itself.

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July 19, 2016 7:18 am

tapirrider

There is absolute­ly no evi­dence that human bones were col­lect­ed by the agri­cul­tur­al indus­try to be ground up and used for fer­til­iz­er by ear­ly farm­ers and set­tlers. There is absolute­ly no evi­dence that a quan­ti­ty of human bones was found in the Unit­ed States on a mag­ni­tude even com­pa­ra­ble to the num­bers of bison bones, deposit­ed in a short inter­val of time com­pa­ra­ble to the slaugh­ter of the bison. And there is absolute­ly no evi­dence in the archae­ol­o­gy of human remains in pre-con­tact Unit­ed States of war deaths on a scale described in the Book of Mor­mon. So I can’t dis­agree with you on “how the evi­dence presents itself” because that evi­dence just isn’t even there.

Why is it that If some ancient objects look fraud­u­lent then all objects are con­cidered fraud­u­lent.. I con­sid­er that fraud it self to clas­si­fy objects as fraud with­out inves­ti­gat­ing all thou­sands of Michi­gan tablets. David A Deal was able to deci­pher one tablet cal­en­dar with a date of 352AD based on astro­nom­i­cal events on the tablet and NASA. Is that not evi­dence? So the Michi­gan tablets can’t all be fraud if some evi­dence is for. By the way they are not the only tablets and writ­ing found in amer­i­ca. Los Lunas stone, bur­rows cave, and oth­er found in Indi­ana and Ohio.

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July 8, 2016 11:43 pm

tapirrider

David, the fact is that the Michi­gan rel­ic you believe to be from Boun­ti­ful, depict­ing a per­son on a cross, is a ver­i­fied hoax arti­fact. Even the LDS church does not con­sid­er it legit­i­mate. Why is it when I am dis­cussing a spe­cif­ic known fraud­u­lent arti­fact you keep try­ing to bring up oth­er objects? Lets stick to that one Michi­gan rel­ic, that one depict­ing a per­son on a cross.

I do not know who post­ed the above post but it was not me. He might be con­fus­ing the mayan cal­en­dar with North Amer­i­can arti­facts.

As far as the Michi­gan relics Alex Koritz did a pod­cast about the relics. He is prob­a­bly less biased than I am. He is LDS but sounds like he does­n’t believe fun­da­men­tal truth claims and he has a dif­fer­ent opin­ion about the ori­gin of the relics. There are also oth­er links that show some of the arti­facts from per­son­al col­lec­tions.

This com­ment is for the Dave who post­ed July 8, 2016 at 11:43 pm. which I now under­stand is not David McK­ane. ” David A Deal was able to deci­pher one tablet cal­en­dar with a date of 352AD based on astro­nom­i­cal events on the tablet and NASA. Is that not evi­dence? ” No, it is not evi­dence. David Allen Deal did not deci­pher any­thing, he made an imag­i­na­tive attempt and his claim was not valid, nor sup­port­ed by any cred­i­ble schol­ars. David Allen Deal was not an archae­ol­o­gist nor a lin­guist. He also wrote a book claim­ing that Noah’s ark had been found, and that find was com­plete­ly debunked by schol­ars. For mem­bers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints, the best evi­dence that the Michi­gan relics are not authen­tic is the fact that the church had own­er­ship of 797 of these hoax objects from 1974 until 2003, when… Read more »

My expe­ri­ence is that all of the church­es anthro­pol­o­gist and Book of Mor­mon experts at FAIR and the Neal A Maxwell Insti­tute are Meso Amer­i­can apol­o­gist. The last thing these guys want to do is come to the con­clu­sion that their life’s work, edu­ca­tion, books, and job to try and prove the Book of Mor­mon hap­pened in Meso Amer­i­ca was a big waste of mon­ey and time. That would be hard to swal­low.

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July 9, 2016 11:59 pm

tapirrider

Seems they have put too much into try­ing to make the Book of Mor­mon fit with 21st cen­tu­ry knowl­edge but end­ed up paint­ing them­selves into a cor­ner. They had to dis­count and dis­re­gard Joseph Smith’s own words and twist the writ­ings in the Book of Mor­mon into some­thing they don’t say. They went against the cau­tions that Joseph Field­ing Smith gave about two Cumorahs and have end­ed up caus­ing a divi­sion in the mem­ber­ship of the church over some­thing as sim­ple as where the sto­ries were sup­posed to have hap­pened. It real­ly should just be on faith. Like I said, Moroni’s promise should be enough. In my youth the apos­tles and prophets pro­mot­ed a hemi­spher­ic mod­el, where the major events hap­pened in the region of the Unit­ed States but all indige­nous peo­ples of the Amer­i­c­as were from Book of Mor­mon peo­ples. Now it isn’t even the same church. So like… Read more »

To me, faith and rea­son should be able to come togeth­er to form a body of truth and infor­ma­tion that is edi­fy­ing on intel­lec­tu­al and spir­i­tu­al lev­els. I know of cer­tain books that pro­vide that to me in great mea­sure, but the Book of Mor­mon (as far as I’m con­cerned) has­n’t come any­where close to sup­ply­ing me with the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that what I’m read­ing is sol­id on all fronts. So when some­one talks about hav­ing faith in some­thing like the Book of Rev­e­la­tion or a “promise of Moroni,” I am skep­ti­cal. First, the Book of Rev­e­la­tion has been rein­ter­pret­ed hun­dreds of times to fit a mul­ti­tude of sit­u­a­tions, and a “promise” from an “angel” from a book that’s loaded with errors does­n’t (to me) deserve my faith, a faith built in part on rea­son and research I can lay my hands on. Fur­ther­more, I don’t think the premise… Read more »

Huh That David Allen Deal stuff is inter­est­ing I had not heard about that till now. You make a good point I would say any­thing that does not sup­port accept­ed the­o­ries about world migra­tion and cul­ture gets thrown out. And espe­cial­ly evi­dence that argues against it is looked at with revul­sion.

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July 9, 2016 11:34 pm

tapirrider

Those things get thrown out for good rea­son. The accept­ed posi­tion of schol­ars is based on evi­dence and facts. Hoax arti­facts aren’t con­sid­ered hoax­es sim­ply because they are con­trary to the posi­tion of schol­ars, they are deter­mined to be hoax­es based on evi­dence. In the case of the Michi­gan relics, the evi­dence is over­whelm­ing that they are hoax­es. Same with the Bur­roughs cave, Los Lunas Deca­logue, Newark Deca­logue, etc.The main­stream con­sen­sus of schol­ars can change, but it takes con­sid­er­able evi­dence that is cred­i­ble. There is no cred­i­ble evi­dence for Hebrews in ancient Amer­i­ca. With­out that, the con­sen­sus can­not be changed. My con­cern with Mor­monism and hoax arti­facts is that pre­sent­ing them as evi­dence mis­leads mem­bers and can actu­al­ly destroy faith when some­one who real­ly wants the truth begins study­ing from rep­utable and cred­i­ble jour­nals of sci­ence and learns that pseu­do-archae­ol­o­gy is filled with hoax­es. Moroni’s promise should be enough. Noth­ing… Read more »

You keep focus­ing on ” hoax” arti­facts. You white wash all the Hopewell and Ade­na arti­facts. Hopewell and Ade­na civ­i­liza­tion are not a hoax nei­ther are their arti­facts fit­ting the scrip­tur­al nar­ra­tive. With the name of tapir rid­er I doubt you have a healthy con­cern about mem­bers faith. I found the con­tro­ver­sial arti­facts to be very inter­est­ing. But the research was over one hun­dred pages and all you focus on is a cou­ple sen­tences. Your focus on this is inter­est­ing. You do not need to wor­ry about people’s faith. Any­body who based their sole activ­i­ty in the church on phys­i­cal evi­dence for the Book of Mor­mon are inac­tive or have left the church. The tbm who are left don’t care about phys­i­cal evi­dence or a sign that the Book of Mor­mon is true. What mat­ters to them is the pur­pose of the Book of Mor­mon. The pur­pose of the Book… Read more »

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July 17, 2016 10:02 pm

tapirrider

David, there is no need at all to use any known hoax arti­facts. This has noth­ing to do with white­wash­ing all of the authen­tic arti­facts. None of those pro­vide any sup­port for claims of ancient Hebrews in the Amer­i­c­as. See­ing them for what they real­ly are offers no evi­dence for the Book of Mor­mon. For LDS mem­bers, there should be no need for any pseudoar­chae­ol­o­gy or claims that chal­lenge the con­sen­sus of sci­ence. But what I have seen with some LDS mem­bers are claims of con­spir­a­cies by sci­en­tists to hide evi­dence and claims of evi­dence that do not hold up. Wayne May’s use of the Michi­gan relics as well as many oth­er unre­li­able claims made by him and oth­ers are noth­ing but garbage. The Book of Mor­mon should stand on its own, Moroni’s promise should be enough. But there are mem­bers who present trash to offer in sup­port of it.… Read more »

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July 18, 2016 4:27 am

Timmy

um…not a Mor­mon but would like to point out that A: LDS church did­n’t own the Michi­gan tablets a pri­vate fam­i­ly did and does. The LED church and the own­ing fam­i­ly were told that they were go in to be researched by their top researchers and experts so they nat­u­ral­ly agreed. Obviosly they were bam­bu­zo­oled by an arche­ol­o­gy department.…not a shock or sur­prise. Hall break into the 4th bas­ment of the Smith­son­ian and you’ll see mil­lions of arti­facts they conned peo­ple out of to keep under the wraps of main stream brain­wash­ing. B: the only rea­son the Michi­gan tablets were and are con­sid­ered hoax­es by main­stream dog­mat­ic is the met­al tools that were used to make them. well met­al tools have been found coast to coast and bor­der to bor­der. Mohawks had steel bows when we showed up…the colonists not­ed that their bows shot arrows fur­ther and fast­we than their… Read more »

For many years, I’ve stud­ied the ori­gins of the Book of Mor­mon. The method by which it was received con­tin­ues to look extreme­ly flim­sy in my opin­ion. Being a descen­dant of Luman Wal­ters, I’ve read his notes that strong­ly sug­gest that the Smith’s were just good at mak­ing things up. I could go on.

Hi. Your mod­el requires the fresh water great lakes to be seas. Seas are not fresh water. If every word in the Book of Mor­mon can be rede­fined to some­thing else, then we could eas­i­ly have a mod­el on the moon. The only mod­el I know of that does not con­tin­u­al­ly rede­fine words is the South Amer­i­can mod­el where the Ama­zon basin was under­wa­ter before Christ. Here is the best cur­rent blog on it: http://​neph​icode​.blogspot​.com/

Well Heber, Gen­er­al­ly in Amer­i­ca you would be cor­rect. But in oth­er places around the world such as Israel where Lehi is from. A sea can refer to a fresh body of water such as the SEA of Galilee.

You are imply­ing that the ancient mind could­n’t tell the dif­fer­ence between a large body of fresh water like a lake and a saline sea. For this to be true, you’d have to pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion. Like for instance, wher­ev­er a body of water is men­tioned in the Bible (Sea of Galilee, Great Sea, Waters of Merom, etc, etc), did the author err in describ­ing it as a salt or fresh water body?

I like the arti­cle and sug­gest any­one who want lean more about the native peo­ple to read their books. A good one is “To the Amer­i­can Indi­an: Rem­i­nis­cences of Yurkok Woman” She talks about the wa-gas peo­ple that lived in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia on the Kalamith Riv­er before the Native Amer­i­cans arrived. She said these ancient white peo­ple had inhab­it­ed the whole con­tent­ment and where friend­ly and nice peo­ple but left some­where up north. And let’s not for­get the Chero­kee who’s oral his­to­ry has them com­ing from Israel (https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​d​M​T​0​M​ePKRf8). The prob­lem I have with the cur­rent the­o­ries of the mound builders is when you read the old books they talk about the Hopewell and Ade­na as a very sophis­ti­cat­ed cul­ture Which is dif­fer­ent than the cur­rent belief that they were hunter gath­ers. In the book Pre­his­toric Men of Ken­tucky by Col. Ben­net A. Young he give account the Shawnee Indi­an war… Read more »

The hopewell were very sophis­ti­cat­ed they had met­al weapons, jew­el­ry, breast plates, head plates, made their own woven cloth cloth­ing, they had a advanced trade sys­tem that stretched thou­sands of miles, they were agri­cul­tur­ist and built for­ti­fi­ca­tions as described in the Book of Mor­mon.

The Michi­gan relics like­wise are a known hoax. The LDS church com­mis­sioned a study of them and deter­mined they were not real. LDS Apos­tle James Tal­mage announced that they were a hoax. This deter­mi­na­tion still holds today.

Your com­ment is out of place. Con­cern­ing the Michi­gan Relics its esti­mat­ed that there are over 10000 arti­facts that were found through­out Michi­gan that are con­sid­ered fake because of cuneiform and Egypt­ian like char­ac­ters on them. Some of the tablet arti­facts showed bib­li­cal depic­tions.

Although I do men­tion the Michi­gan relics and say that they are believed to be fake. I do not use any of the Michi­gan rel­ic arti­facts as evi­dence so your point is base­less.

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June 27, 2016 5:07 pm

tapirrider

No, it isn’t out of place. You said “So did the mound builder art or degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion include met­al­lur­gy, sun dial, cal­en­dars, and star charts? All the item found that where con­sid­ered fraud­u­lent arti­facts by most schol­ars (search Michi­gan arti­facts). Was this sophis­ti­ca­tion just bows and arrows?”

Instead of just men­tion­ing that most schol­ars con­sid­ered the Michi­gan relics fraud­u­lent, you might con­sid­er point­ing out that the LDS church found them to be fake and has not changed its posi­tion on that.

You also said “(and Ten­nessee also is asso­ci­at­ed with Ken­tucky in pre­his­toric ethnog­ra­phy by Rafinesque)”. Rafinesque’s work was a fake too.

Dave, please be care­ful with using known hoax­es in try­ing to make your points.

Tapir The items I quote are con­firmed by mod­ern arche­ol­o­gy. “The hopewell were very sophis­ti­cat­ed they had met­al weapons, jew­el­ry, breast plates, head plates, made their own woven cloth cloth­ing, they had a advanced trade sys­tem that stretched thou­sands of miles, they were agri­cul­tur­ist and built for­ti­fi­ca­tions” I do not know if hopewell Indi­ans used star charts or a cal­en­dar. My guess is that they used the same lunar cal­en­dar that native Amer­i­cans used. Which accord­ing to his­tor­i­cal accounts the Native Amer­i­can cal­en­dar is the same if not very sim­i­lar as the Hebrew cal­en­dar. It’s con­firmed by mod­ern arche­ol­o­gy that the Hopewell made met­al breast­plates etc. Its been esti­mat­ed that about 3/4 of a bil­lion pounds of cop­per were mined by pre­his­toric native Amer­i­cans to include the hopewell and the ade­na. I would call that advanced and I believe all arche­ol­o­gist who stud­ied the Hopewell exten­sive­ly con­sid­er them advance also.… Read more »

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June 27, 2016 10:25 pm

tapirrider

Dave, my points are about the Michi­gan relics and Con­stan­tine Rafinesque’s fraud­u­lent work and your ref­er­ence to these things while dis­cussing the Hopewell cul­ture and the Book of Mor­mon.

The fact that these objects are frauds does not under­mine the authen­tic­i­ty of real Hopewell arti­facts and cul­ture, nor does it threat­en the Book of Mor­mon. But attempts by some LDS mem­bers to sug­gest that the Michi­gan relics and/or Rafinesque’s fraud­u­lent work are authen­tic mis­leads away from truth.

Tapir You have no clue what you are talk­ing about. The Hopewell arti­facts I dis­play are from muse­ums. The one from books I list the source. If you have any ques­tions as to authen­tic­i­ty of any muse­um dis­played arti­fact let me know which one and I will let you know which muse­um it is dis­played. As far as pic­tured arti­facts from books I have the list see below.

Dave, I am talk­ing about your false and mis­lead­ing state­ments con­cern­ing the Michi­gan arti­facts and Con­stan­tine Rafinesque’s fraud­u­lent work. You stat­ed “16 rune­stones found in North Amer­i­ca are gen­er­al­ly believed to be fake. These rune­stones have what appears to be Hebrew, Phoeni­cian, and Greek-like char­ac­ters. These are the Bat Creek Stone, AVM Rune­stone, Bourne stone, Grave Creek Stone, Heav­en­er Rune­stone, Kens­ing­ton Rune­stone, Nar­ra­gansett Rune­stone, Okla­homa rune­stones, Poteau Rune­stone, Spir­it Pond rune­stones, Vérendrye Rune­stone, Shawnee Rune­stone, Ohio Key stone, Ohio Deca­logue stone, The Jon­son Brad­ner stone, and the Michi­gan Tablets. The gen­er­al­ly-accept­ed, but unfound­ed the­o­ry behind these rune­stones is that 19th and 20th cen­tu­ry farm­ers and cit­i­zens had an insa­tiable desire to make fake Indi­an paleo Hebrew, Greek and Phoeni­cian like arti­facts and had the abil­i­ty to do so. Nei­ther of those asser­tions are sup­port­ed by facts.” That state­ment is in error because the facts do sup­port the con­clu­sion that the… Read more »

I stand behind my claim. The idea that two peo­ple would make over 10000 arti­facts and spread them all over Michi­gan I find ridicu­lous and that is just Michi­gan.

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June 28, 2016 5:59 pm

tapirrider

Elder James E. Tal­mage was a rare apos­tle of the LDS church. One of his pub­lished works (he was a co-author) was while he was an apos­tle. It was in a non-LDS, peer reviewed, aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal and was on the sub­ject of the Michi­gan relics. It is well worth read­ing. The Michi­gan Archae­o­log­i­cal Ques­tion Set­tled, by Fred­er­ick Starr, J.O. Kin­na­man, and James E. Tal­mage, pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Anti­quar­i­an and Ori­en­tal Jour­nal 33, no. 3, 1911 https://​books​.google​.com/​b​o​o​k​s​?​i​d​=​B​8​o​a​A​A​A​A​Y​A​A​J​&​p​g​=​P​A​1​6​0​&​l​p​g​=​P​A​1​6​0​&​d​q​#​v​=​o​n​e​p​a​g​e​&​q​&​f​=false You might want to con­sid­er that the Michi­gan relics do not num­ber over 10,000 arti­facts, the true count is some­where around 3,000. Also, the so-called “16 rune­stones” you wrote about have all been like­wise found to be hoax­es. And your claim of “3/4 of a bil­lion pounds of cop­per were mined by pre­his­toric native Amer­i­cans” is also an error that comes from pseudoar­chae­ol­o­gy sources. The State of Our Knowl­edge About Ancient Cop­per Min­ing… Read more »

3000 arti­facts are pos­sessed by muse­ums. It’s esti­mat­ed that over 9000 arti­facts are owned by pri­vate col­lec­tors.

This argu­ment has been point­less the point of my essay and research is not about the Michi­gan relics it has been about the con­firmed arti­facts and cloth­ing, the met­al weapons and tools that fit the Book of Mor­mon. The Book of Mor­mon ani­mals that went extinct in Hopewell lands. Native Amer­i­can DNA from Israel and Iran that is not found in Siberia or east or Cen­tral Asia. Hopewell for­ti­fi­ca­tions that match Book of Mor­mon descrip­tions and the BoM time­line. His­tor­i­cal accounts of Native Amer­i­can beliefs bur­ial meth­ods and arti­facts that match the Old Tes­ta­ment and Bom Nar­ra­tive. The Michi­gan relics dis­cus­sion is a waste of time.

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June 29, 2016 10:33 pm

tapirrider

Dave, if your esti­mate of over 9000 relics is in ref­er­ence to those with inscrip­tions sug­gest­ing ancient Hebrews were in the Amer­i­c­as, then your esti­mate is flat out wrong. The forg­eries known as the Scot­ford-Sop­er-Sav­age col­lec­tion, made by two peo­ple, does not and has nev­er had that many. At most, only about 3,000 hoax arti­facts were fab­ri­cat­ed by them. You said “The idea that two peo­ple would make over 10000 arti­facts and spread them all over Michi­gan I find ridicu­lous and that is just Michi­gan.” The facts are work­ing against you. You said “This argu­ment has been point­less the point of my essay and research is not about the Michi­gan relics” Dave, it is cru­cial to be accu­rate and use reli­able infor­ma­tion if you want your points to be believ­able. You are using known hoax arti­facts and mak­ing erro­neous claims about them. This is dam­ag­ing to your case and is… Read more »

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June 30, 2016 12:26 am

tapirrider

Dave said:

“The one I find the most inter­est­ing are the Michi­gan relics in the geog­ra­phy map Michi­gan is the land boun­ti­ful. It is also the city that Christ vis­it­ed. In the Michi­gan relics there is a depic­tion of a per­son on a cross. I think the the Michi­gan relics are arti­facts from the city of Boun­ti­ful.”https://mormonbandwagon.com/dave/tribe-manasseh‑1/#comment-72

Then you tell me “This argu­ment has been point­less the point of my essay and research is not about the Michi­gan relics”. It would be point­less if you were not men­tion­ing them and mak­ing claims about them. But you are the one using them in your essay and com­ments. It is not point­less and out of place to dis­cuss fraud­u­lent hoax arti­facts when they are pre­sent­ed as evi­dence for the Book of Mor­mon.

To Tapir Rid­er’s point, Dave, if you don’t feel strong­ly that these Michi­gan relics are impor­tant to your mod­el, per­haps it makes sense to remove or strike them since they appear to be at least most­ly a proven hoax.

The gen­er­al­ly accept­ed the­o­ry behind these rune­stones is that 19th and 20th cen­tu­ry farm­ers and cit­i­zens had an insa­tiable desire to make fake Indi­an paleo Hebrew, Greek and Phoeni­cian like arti­facts and had the abil­i­ty to do so. I find this prob­lem­at­ic.

Noth­ing pic­tured in my essay are from the Michi­gan relics. If you want to know from which muse­um the arti­facts are from let me know they are all Hopewell arti­facts except for Arling­ton Mal­lo­ry he claimed the iron slag he found was from an Ade­na site. There arti­fact depic­tions from old­er books from the ear­ly 20th 18th 17th and 16th cen­tu­ry sources are claimed by the authors to be found in mound builder sites.

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July 8, 2016 9:22 pm

tapirrider

David, I’m not talk­ing about pic­tures. I have clear­ly explained and shown with your own quotes what you have said about the Michi­gan relics. They are, in fact, hoax arti­facts.

When you say pic­tures are you refer­ring to the con­firmed Hopewell arti­facts of breast­plates and head plates etc?

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July 8, 2016 11:17 pm

tapirrider

I am talk­ing about what you have said about the Michi­gan relics, not the pic­tures that YOU are refer­ring to. David, you said:

“The one I find the most inter­est­ing are the Michi­gan relics in the geog­ra­phy map Michi­gan is the land boun­ti­ful. It is also the city that Christ vis­it­ed. In the Michi­gan relics there is a depic­tion of a per­son on a cross. I think the the Michi­gan relics are arti­facts from the city of Boun­ti­ful.”https://mormonbandwagon.com/dave/tribe-manasseh‑1/#comment-72

David, the Michi­gan relics are hoax arti­facts. The one with a depic­tion of a per­son on a cross is not from the Hopewell cul­ture. It is a forgery. You should rethink your posi­tion that the Michi­gan relics are arti­facts from the city of Boun­ti­ful. They are not. They are fraud­u­lent fab­ri­ca­tions and do not sup­port the Book of Mor­mon.

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July 8, 2016 11:36 pm

Joe S

David.…Keep trust­ing the spir­it. Your doing it the right way. My wife and I just spent a full 12 hour day at a Book of Mor­mon Sym­po­sium with Rod Mel­drum, Bruce Porter, Ryan Fish­er, Wayne May and oth­ers. I love the tes­ti­mo­ny I have of the Book of Mor­mon Lands here in the Promised Land. Pret­ty much any mem­ber you ask who has a tes­ti­mo­ny of the Heart­land mod­el knew with­in min­utes this is the Promised Land, not MesoAmer­i­ca. I’ve only been active in the church a cou­ple years, I’m in my 50’s and grew up believ­ing MesoAmer­i­ca was where the Book of Mor­mon took place. I try to let mem­bers know who are try­ing to Google there way to the truth to remem­ber, the Heart­land mod­el here in 2016 has giv­en their rebut­tle and evi­dence to every­thing the old FARMS, who BYU fired in 2012, then became the Inter­preter and… Read more »

This is how I would respond to your mod­el. The God of the Old Tes­ta­ment is a ridicu­lous God; why try to con­nect Native Amer­i­cans to Him? Why con­tin­ue to believe that God “cursed” Laman­ites with dark skin? That’s just plain bar­bar­ic and racist. Native Amer­i­cans on both con­ti­nents of North and South Amer­i­ca, have a rich his­to­ry WITHOUT being con­nect­ed to Israel and the nomadic myths and tales of the Old Tes­ta­ment. It just does­n’t make any log­i­cal sense to even try to con­nect them. So few peo­ple believe in the God of the Old Tes­ta­ment any more, any way, and Mor­monis­m’s attempts to try to con­nect Jesus and Jeho­vah and the Native Amer­i­cans is sil­ly. Think of it, God curs­ing peo­ple with dark skin? What kind of God is that?

Kevin I think you and many lds mem­bers mis­un­der­stand what the curse is. The curse has noth­ing to do with phys­i­cal skin color.The curse is sep­a­ra­tion from God and becom­ing a wicked peo­ple and com­mit­ting all kinds of atroc­i­ties. The mark as men­tioned in the Book of Mor­mon is also men­tioned which does refer to phys­i­cal appear­ance but the mark is neu­tral. In the case of the Amlicites they were once Nephites and rebelled and became wicked. They were wicked and cursed. It does not say god changed their skin col­or. But in order to dis­tin­guish them­selves from the Nephites they put red on their fore­heads. Alma 3:13 13 Now we will return again to the Amlicites, for they also had a mark set upon them; yea, they set the mark upon them­selves, yea, even a mark of red upon their fore­heads By mak­ing this phys­i­cal mark on their fore­heads.… Read more »

David: I think you just cut and past­ed this reply from my lit­tle tid­bit on the LDS Church’s Indi­an Place­ment Pro­gram and the Bundy takeover in East­ern Ore­gon. It would be nice to have a real dis­cus­sion with you. Please see my reply in the oth­er post­ing, and remem­ber that the plain and sim­ple read­ing of the Book of Mor­mon as read by your for­mer prophets, was that the curse was dark skin and that by liv­ing right­eous­ly, like con­vert­ing to the gospel through the Indi­an Place­ment Pro­gram, the Native Amer­i­cans would become white and delight­some. See Spencer W. Kim­ball Octo­ber 1960 gen­er­al con­fer­ence address.

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January 7, 2016 4:12 pm

Sean H

I’ve gone through this process before, although I don’t think I put as much thought into it. There is a rea­son why the Hopewell Tra­di­tion match­es up rea­son­ably well, except for the huge dis­par­i­ty on time frames.

These are the remains that Joe was used to encoun­ter­ing and were the inspi­ra­tion for his book.

I see dna, archae­o­log­i­cal, lin­guis­tic, geo­graph­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and arti­facts as evi­dence. Ulti­mate­ly phys­i­cal evi­dence does not mat­ter because a spir­i­tu­al wit­ness trumps all. But that being said I stand behind the evi­dence and the­o­ries being pre­sent­ed. Feel free to point out holes in my the­o­ries I’m will­ing to defend to defend each and every­one.

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November 9, 2015 9:14 am

Marshall

If it all comes down to faith, why did you cre­ate this doc­u­ment? Seems anti­thet­i­cal to seek proof of some­thing you believe requires faith to be real.

I’m not try­ing to prove the Book of Mor­mon is true. What I’m doing is pro­vid­ing my opin­ion based on the archae­o­log­i­cal, dna, cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic and geo­graph­i­cal research of where I think the geo­graph­ic loca­tions of where the Book of Mor­mon took place. If cor­rect I think the the­o­ries and research pro­vid­ed can help peo­ple under­stand the Book of Mor­mon from a geo­graph­i­cal and archae­o­log­i­cal stand­point. If cor­rect I think it helps to under­stand what Nephite cloth, met­al Jew­el­ry, met­al breast plates, met­al head plates, and oth­er Nephite arti­facts look like.

Also and prob­a­bly most impor­tant­ly I enjoy dur­ing research in this area.

How do you know it’s fake are you an archae­ol­o­gist are you an expert I think David’s got more expe­ri­ence than you do bring up some­thing valid instead of just attack­ing our faith I’m Native Amer­i­can and also a proud mem­ber of the LDS Church

The first sec­tion 1–6 does not apply to me but to Mel­drum but I will say I think this guy makes some very juve­nile crit­i­cisms. In the sec­ond sec­tion 7–10 I quote Joseph Smith vision about Zelph. Zelph is not men­tioned in this sec­tion nor does any­thing else apply to me and what I have used. Sec­tion C I addressed in a pre­vi­ous com­ment 11. I stat­ed that all the rune­stones were con­sid­ered fake. The char­ac­ters found on the rune­stones have been com­pared to Greek, Hebrew, and Phoeni­cian. What I dis­agreed with was that I don’t believe ear­ly 19th and 18th cen­tu­ry set­tlers would have been capa­ble of forg­ing paleo Hebrew, Greek, and Phoeni­cian char­ac­ters. 12–13 N/A Sec­tion D see my sec­tion about dna evi­dence https://mormonbandwagon.com/dave/tribe-manasseh‑2/ 21.N/A 22. There is no spe­cif­ic verse that says Sidon ran south to North. How mesoamer­i­can apol­o­gist say sidon ran south to north is inco­her­ent… Read more »

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November 2, 2015 6:04 pm

ldshistorythrowaway

This is frankly some of the worst “his­to­ry” I have ever read. If you are going to make claims that there are iron swords, ele­phants, hors­es, and char­i­ots, you bet­ter pro­vide some seri­ous cita­tions. For instance, in response I could post this inter­view with a Yale pro­fes­sor on book of mor­mon arche­ol­o­gy. http://​mor​mon​sto​ries​.org/​m​i​c​h​a​e​l​-​c​o​e​-​a​n​-​o​u​t​s​i​d​e​r​s​-​v​i​e​w​-​o​f​-​b​o​o​k​-​o​f​-​m​o​r​m​o​n​-​a​r​c​h​a​e​ology/. Your friend would most like­ly claim that the sub­ject of that inter­view is mesoamer­i­ca and not North Amer­i­ca, but if you lis­ten to the inter­view that’s because the only even remote­ly “arguable” (I use this in the broad­est sense because the book of mor­mon is entire­ly made up) loca­tion for the book of mor­mon is mesoamer­i­ca.

If this is the worst his­to­ry you have ever seen you should have no prob­lem dis­prov­ing the evi­dence. Keep in mind though the sources cit­ed from ear­ly his­to­ri­ans and set­tlers exclud­ing archae­o­log­i­cal sites have been used to write the entire his­to­ry of the Native Amer­i­can Peo­ple.

I stat­ed that all the rune­stones were con­sid­ered fake. The char­ac­ters found on the rune­stones have been com­pared to Greek, Hebrew, and Phoeni­cian. What I dis­agreed with was that I don’t believe ear­ly 19th and 18th cen­tu­ry set­tlers would have been capa­ble of forg­ing paleo Hebrew, Greek, and Phoeni­cian char­ac­ters.

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October 30, 2015 6:39 pm

curious_mormon

A cou­ple of big prob­lems with this. Joseph Smith claims there were only two great migra­tions to the Amer­i­can con­ti­nents. Group 1: The Jared­ites. They depend on a lit­er­al tow­er of babel, and they need­ed to all die save two men, ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. Group 2: The Lehites. They need­ed to show up around 600 BC, but the Hopewell exist­ed at least 100–200 years pri­or to that in Flori­da. To put this into per­spec­tive, that’s like claim­ing men land­ed on the moon around the time of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary war. It’s wrong. Even the church essays admit there is no DNA con­nec­tion. The hopewell graves that were dug up do not match Jew­ish DNA that traces their lin­eage back to David. Instead, they’re linked to the chero­kee which goes back to near­ly 1800 BC. And that’s just a start. We could also talk about the Tow­er of Babel, the lack of arti­facts specif­i­cal­ly… Read more »

There were three migra­tions the Lehites, Jared­ites, and Mulekites. The Jared­ites and Lehites kept writ­ten records the Mulekites did not.

The Hopewell Indi­ans at Crys­tal Riv­er date to 500BC that gives Lehi and his fam­i­ly about 100 years to make a archae­o­log­i­cal foot­print com­plete­ly rea­son­able in my opin­ion. Crys­tal riv­er is next to the ocean so its also geo­graph­i­cal match.

Ear­ly set­tlers found bones every­where in the New York area. And Indi­ans in that area have a belief about a ancient and great and bloody bat­tle that took place.

For me I see enough arti­facts to sup­port the claims made in the Book of Mor­mon.

The Great Lake Native Amer­i­can hap­lo group x is most close­ly relat­ed to the Israeli Druze of Galilee

“These Galilee Druze indi­vid­u­als rep­re­sent the refugium of an ances­tral group with high diver­si­ty and high fre­quen­cy of hap­logroup X, which was more preva­lent in the region in antiq­ui­ty, and from which the glob­al diver­si­ty of X mtD­NA hap­logroup emerged.”

If you look at the Par­si­mo­ny tree you will see the Ojib­wa are in a direct line with the Israeli Druze.

As to why the tribe of Man­asseh (Lehi’s tribe) is not a Jew­ish mark­er is prob­a­bly because the tribe of Man­asseh fell away from Hebrew beliefs due to Assyr­i­an rule and occu­pa­tion as explained in the Old Tes­ta­ment and ancient his­to­ry. See the sec­tion about chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce tribe.

The one I find the most inter­est­ing are the Michi­gan relics in the geog­ra­phy map Michi­gan is the land boun­ti­ful. It is also the city that Christ vis­it­ed. In the Michi­gan relics there is a depic­tion of a per­son on a cross. I think the the Michi­gan relics are arti­facts from the city of Boun­ti­ful. Here is a link to the sto­ry about the Michi­gan relics.